Economic theories of the household predict that increases in female relative human capital lead to decreases in female housework time. However, evidence seems to contradict this implication: Despite the increase in female labor force participation, time devoted to housework by men has changed very little in the last decades. Also, studies show that, when a wife works more hours than her husband outside the home, she still undertakes a larger share of housework.
Traditional theories of the household can explain this evidence by assuming either that women have a higher comparative advantage in household production or that women derive a higher utility from housework. However, this explanation is not valid for the empirical regularity that women with higher earnings than their husbands do not only do relatively more housework than them, but also do more housework than women whose earnings are lower than their husbands.
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